The planning of urban and rural areas requires thinking about where people will live, work, play, study, shop and how they will get about the place, and to devise strategies for long time periods. Town Planning: The Basics provides a general introduction to the components of urban areas, including housing, transportation and infrastructure, and health and environment, showing how appropriate policies can be developed. Explaining planning activity at different scales of operation, this book distinguishes between the "big stuff", the grand strategy for providing homes, jobs and infrastructure; the "medium stuff", the design and location of development; and the "small stuff" affecting mainly small sites and individual households.

Planning as an activity is part of a complex web stretching way beyond the planning office, and this book provides an overview of the many components needed to create a successful town. It is invaluable to anyone with an interest in planning, from students learning about the subject for the first time to graduates thinking about embarking on a career in planning, to local councillors on planning committees and community boards.

Tony Hall is Emeritus Professor of Town Planning at Anglia Ruskin University at Chelmsford, Essex.

He started out as a transport planner, with experience in local government, consultancy and research, but later retrained in urban design. His subsequent academic career at Anglia Ruskin produced notable publications in the field of design guidance, particularly the application of computer visualisation and urban morphology. He also served for many years on the Councils of both the Royal Town Planning Institute and the Town and Country Planning Association.

Rather unusually, he was also an elected member of Chelmsford City Council. He led the Council’s planning policy at the political level from 1996 to 2003. He was instrumental in raising the general standards of design resulting in the award to Chelmsford by the government of Beacon Status for the Quality of the Built Environment in 2003, as set out in his 2007 book, Turning a Town Around.

He took early retirement in 2004 and moved to Brisbane, Australia. He was made an Adjunct Professor at Griffith University where he undertook research on sustainable urban form. His 2010 book, The Life and Death of the Australian Backyard, won the 2012 Planning Institute of Australia Award for Excellence in Cutting Edge Research and is referred to in the current Australian school history textbook, Retroactive 10. His subsequent book, The Robust City, was published by Routledge in 2015.

He returned to Britain in 2016. He now lives in London and continues to write books on planning topics. He is a Fellow of the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Chartered Institute of Highways and Transportation and the Academy of Social Sciences.